Joe Dempsey, the bartender at the Orange, died last Saturday. I’m pretty sure he was a senior, and Saturday next, would have graduated with me from Syracuse University. Joe was the 6’ 3” fixture behind the downstairs bar, his beefy hands passing out beers and receiving payment as fast as lightning. His petite, dark-haired girlfriend, Barb, sat on a bar stool by the register every night that I worked upstairs as a busgirl.

Every night that is, until a closing-time altercation with customers who weren’t ready for the party to be over. I heard there was a car chase through Thorndon Park, and somewhere on that lilac-scented hill, in the early hours of a May morning, Joe’s curly blonde head slammed against the inside of his tin can van as it careened off the curvy road. His heart stopped mid-beat.

I suppose you’d call Joe an acquaintance, not a friend. I didn’t go to his proper funeral, wherever it was, but I am going to the end-of-the year luncheon at the Orange for all staff.

So, alone, I walk into the upstairs of the Orange and fill a submarine roll with cold meat from a platter set on a table in the middle of the dance floor. The jukebox is mute. Barb and Charles, the manager, are sitting on one side of a red vinyl booth. Henry, the old fellow who owns the place, spreads out on the other side of the table.

He squints his toady eyes and sucks on a Carlton. His smoke highlights dust motes floating in the stale air. “Ya done good kid.”

Good? What is good? I mastered how to put ten bottles on my fingertips at once and release them into a chute that leads directly to crates in the basement.

“Thanks,” I manage, between bites of my humongous sandwich and slurps of free beer.

I‘m still standing in the center of the small dance floor, usually so crowded, now vast in its emptiness, when Brad walks in, the bartender who manned the upstairs bar window, and Dave the guy who worked the other side of the downstairs bar with Joe. Some girlfriends I don’t know tag along. I don’t stay long after that, just long enough to notice things I’d never noticed: the whole room stinks of bathroom cleanser, the windows are made of glass brick, the linoleum is so worn it’s hard to say for sure if it was supposed to be green. A space so thrilling in the dark, pathetic in the light of day.

Maybe John was right. I have nothing in common with the people in the room except drinking and Joe, and no one dares speak his name. I drain my cup, make my farewells, and dump what’s left of my sandwich in a trash can around the corner on M Street. I hike past the library and up the steep hill to Thorndon Park, traversing the egg-shaped drumlin until I find my favorite spot, the lilac bower in full bloom. I close my eyes. My lungs inflate with the intoxicating purple fragrance.

Maybe John was wrong. Joe’s death seems not so sad as weird, inscrutably weird. I continue to the tippity top of the park and sit cross-legged on the lawn, surveying the campus where I’ve spent four years preparing for a future which could, in an instant, be erased. I glance at my smooth thighs glistening in the sunshine with fine golden hairs. My own death seems an impossible inevitability, and yet the hulking grandson of a prizefighter was no match for the silent, sulking, force lurking just below the surface of existence. Was I drawn to this idyllic garden or magnetized to the site where Joe’s soul was kidnapped? A wave of emotion I can’t name takes me to a depth I can’t fathom.

A week later, I walk across the stage of the Carrier Dome to receive my diploma. I march in a white robe with the others whose last name begins with the letter C. Joe’s ghost still floats behind me somewhere in the D section. D for Dempsey and Death.

Was it exactly seven days between Joe’s monumental demise and my graduation? I couldn’t guarantee. In light of eternity, time blurs. The end of an era speeds up as it winds down.

In the wake of these two events, I couldn’t say which was more terrifying, a vessel sunk in harbor or launched into open seas.

The other day, I was feeling stuck and discouraged. At times, what writer isn’t? So I chatted with a writer friend who asked me these questions: Why did I write? What do I hope to achieve? What do I want? What roadblocks keep me from getting there? It was a rich conversation, as conversations are with those who know and love you, so I share my answers, hoping that as I articulate my self-constructed obstacles, you, dear readers, can recognize and overcome your own.

First and foremost, I write because I can’t not write. The process of putting my thoughts and experiences into words is vital to understanding my life. The more an incident confuses me, the more I need to unspool it. The more something guilts or shames, the more I scrub to get at its stain. The more something hurts, the more I probe to understand what makes that spot so sore. I’m impelled to write out a detailed log until seemingly disconnected facts and circumstances make sense, not only in my head, but in my heart. As a believer, this is one way the Lord has redeemed lost and damaged portions of my life.

My first novel based on the true story of teaching in an urban middle school is a vivid example. That experience left me broken in a way I couldn’t name, damaged in a way I couldn’t define except as failure. What started as flaming pages from my prayer journal eventually turned into a self-published Kindle: Broken, 180 Days in the Wilderness of an Urban Middle School. Why did it take ten years of written processing, to get to a finished product? That leads me to my next point, what I hope to achieve through my writing.

In the instance of my first book, quite frankly I wasn’t sure. There were so many conflicting goals. Did I want to vindicate myself as a teacher? To prove to myself and others that I wasn’t a failure? Did I want to indict an education system that harmed not helped the most vulnerable of its students? Could I point to what was wrong? Did I have a plan to fix it? If not, was I just a whiner? Who wants to read a whiner? And where was God in my struggle? Why didn’t He help me? Help my students? If I wrote the truth, would I embarrass myself and dishonor the God I said I wanted to glorify?

I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way to glorify God is to write the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the awful truth because He leads us to and through suffering, the only crucible for the soul. It was my emotional agony, coupled with the Truth of God’s Word, that showed me what was really at stake, my self-worth through a positive identity. Up until my collapse as a teacher, I’d relied on my professional competence as the foundation of my identity. The answer to who am I was a good teacher. Ironically, as a failing teacher, I was in the same category as my minority, under-achieving students who were at the bottom of the heap by the world’s standards. I felt their frustration and anger as it mirrored my own. I fought to prove myself in illegitimate ways just as they did. As long as I clung to my accomplishments, I could not rest in my core identity as God’s beloved child. Knowing this in my head, did nothing to extinguish my pride. I persisted in self-reliance until God stripped me of my laurels and all I had was what Jesus accomplished on the cross in my place, until my spotless new persona as his precious daughter was more real than anything I could manufacture on my own.

I’m almost done with the rough draft of my second book, a memoir with the working title: Breadcrumbs, A Baby Boomers Path to Jesus. If I really learned my lesson about my core identity in Christ, and my deepest goal is to glorify God, then what’s keeping me from finishing? For three years I’ve been writing about God’s mercy despite the peccadillos of my youth. It’s a challenge to record unbecoming incidents without refracting some of their foolish glare. And yet without full disclosure, I shrink God’s grace.

When my friend asked me what I wanted from all my efforts, the self-less answer was that others might benefit from my stories. They might find comfort in the fact that they are not alone. They might see there is a living God who cares about them. That his sovereign plans reach far and above any personal disasters large or small.

These virtuous desires are true. But more selfish wishes are also true: I want to accomplish something important. I want whatever talent I possess to be affirmed and applauded. I want to not only be self-published, but also published by a traditional publisher of the highest caliber. I want a skillful editor to help me bring my writing to the level of literature. I want a wonderful agent who will encourage me and teach me how to reach the widest audience. Does that mean I’m not writing for God’s glory but my own? Am I angling for a new professional identity as a writer instead of a teacher? Has acclaim as a writer become my new idol?

Framed in the negative, my hopes are clearly my deepest fears. Either I will succeed and lose my privacy, or conversely, I will be rejected by publishers, and dismissed by the public and critics alike. My tale will miss the mark, too worldly for believers, too Jesusy for readers from the world at large, and none of my efforts will make a whit of difference to anyone. These fears and mixed motives have kept my memoir parked by the side of the road. If I don’t try, I can’t fail. If I’m not vulnerable, I can’t be exposed as less than perfect. Perhaps timidity is another guise for pride.

This then, is my advice to myself: Don’t listen to the voices in your head telling you it’s too risky to be real. You serve an omniscient God who isn’t surprised by your past, present or future, and it’s to Him you must give account. Don’t listen to the voices that say your book isn’t good enough, you’ll be a laughing stock. Who will be laughing? Not your God, not your true friends. If your goals are muddy, so be it. Keep trusting in the process of redemption and the Holy Spirit will reveal anything your heart needs to understand. If you are serving a God who is truly good and truly omnipotent, He can use the worst of you for his best. For nothing, not your worst writing, nor your most excellent writing, can remeasure your worth to the Heavenly Father who adores you. Finally, if you trust that your creator has endowed you with all the abilities you possess, then you are free to run towards your goal, resting in the knowledge that it’s His power that so wondrously works in you—so leave all the results above and write on.

Lydia, my roommate, and I take the Tube to Picadilly and wander the West End looking for a club that’s hopping. We enter a small establishment with a central dance floor crammed with bodies flailing under a disco ball. I order a hard cider from the side bar and swallow its tang.

A short guy in a grey suit asks me to dance. Shards of light glint off his wire-rimmed glasses as the bass throbs. He shouts, “I’m from Switzerland.”

I shout back, “American.”

We gyrate with the others until the music slows. He takes me in his arms and tells me his family is wealthy. “Would you like to visit Switzerland? Go skiing?” He shows me his glittering watch. “We could go to my apartment and get to know each other better.”

I look over his shoulder for Lydia. She is at a table on the perimeter sipping a foamy stout.“Not tonight.” I slip his arm from my waist. “I need to check in with my friend.”

Before I even settle on the bench, there’s a voice behind me, “Mind if we join you?”

Lydia and I look up at a tall guy with shaggy chestnut hair. Next to him, a young man not much taller than I am with straight black hair, and smiling brown eyes. I know immediately which one I will dance with all night, not lanky Tony who says he’s from Ireland, Lydia can have him. It’s Selva whose name means jungle in Spanish even though he says he’s Malaysian with an unpronounceable six syllable surname.

We leave the club late, sweaty and breathless as Tony hails a hack.

We crowd into the backseat of the black cab, Tony, Lydia, me, and Selva.

The driver asks, “Where to?” with a Caribbean accent.

Tony leans forward. “Croydon.”

I turn to Selva. “No one in Britain seems to be British. Not in London anyway. My landlord and his sister are from Poland. I buy hot naan from a Pakistani tandoori. The doner kebab shop on Bayswater is run by Turks.”

Selva smiles and puts his arm around me. “There’s no escaping The Empire.”

After a twenty-minute ride, the car parks in front of what looks like a haunted mansion. Selva helps me out of the vehicle.

While Tony pays the cabby under November moonlight, I survey the vast lawns and dormant flower beds. Skeletal bushes and swaying tree limbs scratch the stars.

Lydia takes my arm. “Is this where you guys live?”

Tony opens a rusty iron gate and slowly says, “Yes.”

Selva walks through the opening. “But we also work here.”

Lydia hesitates. “Well, what do you do? What is this place?”

Selva laughs. “It’s an asylum.”

“As in insane?” I remain beside Lydia.

“As in psychiatric hospital. Tony and I are male attendants, and we have rooms on the grounds.”

Tony beckons. “Come on, we’ll show you.”

Under the circumstances, I can’t believe I said no to Swiss aristocracy. And yet I take Selva’s hand. Lydia takes Tony’s, and we enter the side door of what looks like a long dormitory.

Moon shadows stretch from a bank of tall windows across the corridor to a series of endless doors. As we creep down the hallway, I wonder what tortured souls lie in the beds on the other side of the wall.

Selva opens one of the doors and turns on the light. “These are my quarters.”

I see Lydia and Tony disappear into the room next door. There is nowhere to sit but on an iron bedstead pushed against the wall. A sink opposite completes the accommodations. Above the sink is a mirror and a glass shelf featuring a toothbrush, toothpaste, and a figurine with multiple arms and the head of an elephant.

I point to the small statue. What’s that?”

Selva sits beside me. “That’s Ganesh, the Hindu god who removes obstacles whenever you begin something new.” He grins and lies back on the bed.

“Oh.” I remain upright with my feet on the floor.

He caresses the long hair flowing down my back.

“You remind me of my mother.”

“Why?” I twist to face him.

He smooths the bed for me to lie down beside him. “Because she’s beautiful and kind.”

I squint at his line. “You’ve only known me a few hours. How can you know I’m kind?”

He continues smiling. “I just know.”

“Without evidence?”

“Well, you danced with me,” he bursts out laughing, “and I’m not a very good dancer.”

I laugh too and lie back. “This whole situation is ridicules. I have a serious boyfriend.”

“In America?”

“In America.”

“Yet, you are here with me.” He smiles.

Starring at the ceiling, I just know that this boy, whose name means the habitat of savages and choking snakes, is kinder than the boyfriend I have back home, and when Lydia interrupts by opening the door, I know I want to see him again.

Next weekend Tony and Selva invite us to go dancing at another club. When we take a breather at a tiny table, Selva leans in. “I’m going to visit my parents in Kuala Lumpur for three weeks. Would you like to come?”

I’m tempted to ask if his family is wealthy, and will there be skiing. “You’re kidding right? About me going with you—half way around the world?”

“No, I want you to meet my mother.”

Again with the mother. I can’t believe my brain is actually considering the details. “Look, my semester is over in about three weeks, and Lydia and I have already booked a flight to check out Paris before we head home to the States.”

“Bummer.”

I hate the word bummer, but his British accent makes everything sound cool.

“Can I at least call you when I get back? I really like you.” The light in his eye tells me it’s so, but I don’t expect to hear from him.

The week Selva leaves for Malaysia, Princess Anne and Mark Phillips are married in Westminster Abbey. Lydia and I are among the throng gathered near Buckingham Palace, the destination of the royal couple’s fairy tale coach. We watch stoic guards in red coats and bearskin hats open the iconic gate. We wait until the newlyweds wave from the balcony in all their finery.

This launches a last-minute blitz of all things British whenever I’m not studying for finals. I check out Covent Garden where Eliza Doolittle sold her flowers and the British Museum full of foreign gods and ideal marble men plundered while Britannia ruled the waves. I take The Tube to The Tate full of moody Turner landscapes, and massive Henry Moore figures full of holes. I wander through Kensington Gardens and discover the Peter Pan statue. Lydia and I make a point to return to Johnny’s Fish and Chips served in newspaper, at the foot of Tower Bridge, a stone’s throw from Big Ben, Parliament, and the Tower of London where Henry the VIII lopped the heads off inconvenient wives.

It’s so hard to leave this legendary city, I neglect packing until the night before our flight to France. How to fit my few mementos into a small blue American Tourister? I roll a package of Digestive brand biscuits in my pajamas and fold a mohair shawl from Scotland for my mom on top of my sweaters.

The phone rings. I drop the black derby I bought on Portobello Road for my dad, and the antique safari helmet for my brother.

“It’s Selva. I’m back. How about a party at a friend’s house tonight? I have gifts from Malaysia.”

“I’m leaving in the morning.” I look at Lydia, also packing, and mouth, “Croydon?”

Lydia shakes her head, “Are you crazy?”

“Yes,” I speak into the phone, and write down the party’s address.

It’s almost midnight by the time I navigate to a townhouse jammed with people. I’m introduced as Selva’s American girlfriend. We drink in the kitchen, dance in the living room, and around three in the morning, as the crowd thins, he pulls out his gifts: a cheap necklace with a crucifix for me and four palm place mats for my mom.

I take the crucifix, “What do I do with this? Put it beside my toothbrush?”

He laughs and hooks the clasp at the back of my neck. “No, silly. You wear it over your heart.”

I whisper, “Thanks,” thinking I will ditch this superstitious hunk of junk asap, but I finger the place mats. “These are beautiful.”

“I hiked into the jungle to buy them from an indigenous tribe and paid for them with salt.”

“Salt?”

“It’s more valuable than money in the jungle. They use it to cure fish and meat, to flavor bland cassava, and as an antiseptic.”

“Interesting.” I stand. “Well, I’ve got to go.”

“There are no more trains at this hour.” He plumps a pillow from the couch, and lays down on the living room floor. “Why don’t you spend the night? Gatwick is only twenty minutes away.”

I look at others already passed out on the carpet, and curl up in his arms.

In the morning light, heavy headed and rumpled, I check my map of London and realize the airport is twenty minutes south of Croydon. My flat is twenty minutes in the opposite direction, and I still have to retrieve my things. Panicked, I step over snoring bodies, and Selva helps me call a hack. We kiss good-bye, and I press my face against the window as the cab races north.

“Please, wait!” I yell to the driver when we get to my flat, run up three flights of stairs, strap on my brother’s safari helmet, grab my suitcase in one hand and my dad’s derby in the other, and lunge into the vehicle. When we get to Gatwick, Lydia is wringing her hands at the gate. I sigh. We board, and take off for the continent.

It's not as if the City of Lights isn’t wonderful: almond croissants and baguettes with cheese right around the corner from our tiny room on the Rive Gauche opposite Notre Dame. We view the real Mona Lisa, Les Champs-Élysée, and L’Arc de Triomphe. A couple Algerian guys, no one in Paris is French, invite us to their flat for couscous and vegetables that we eat with our fingers out of a common bowl. But when they urge us to spend the night, I’m eager to return to our room with a bathroom down the hall that has scraps of newsprint nailed to the wall as toilet paper. Because it’s Selva I’m thinking of—and his gifts.

Years ago, I thought his name meant jungle. It does in Spanish. But in Kuala Lumpur where they speak Tamil and Hindi, Selva can mean: charming, jewel, wealth, simple joy, or lucky person. I no longer believe in luck, rather in the over-arching sovereignty of a God who knows the beginning and the end. A God who led me to a young man who had nothing but a light in his eye that made me feel beautiful and kind. A young man who offered an extravagant invitation to his home far away, who gave me the symbol of a God too big to fit on a shelf.

And those place mats? My mom, after hearing Selva's story, kept her gift until she was no longer able to keep her own home. At the time, I understood that sacrifice makes a present more costly, but growing up in suburbia, I didn’t know that salt is a universal healing agent and preservative. I didn’t connect the fact that the mats were made from fronds like those the crowd waved as they shouted hosanna to the King come to cure our rot and offer us delicious life. So many symbols, so many clues. I couldn’t see any of this in 1973. I was a swine before pearls.

Selva was the Jewel in the crown of my semester in London. My prince charming. Did God just know that one day I would understand the crazy love of the crucifix? That He was saving a place for me at His banquet. That as a believer, He destined me to become the salt of the earth?

I didn’t know Marie Gardner before the first day of fourth grade with Mrs. Barrington. We both have braided ponytails, hers ash blonde, mine strawberry. Marie is left handed, and I’m right handed, so we can beat each other arm wrestling on our dominant side. She’s in the Olympic Club too, so we get to go to the gym together the last hour of school on Friday and play games with the other fourth graders who earned President Kennedy’s Physical Fitness Award. I love Mr. Le Tour, our gym teacher. He divides us into two teams to play, Snatch the Bacon, and throws out the huge medicine ball. Both sides go for it. I love that there are almost no rules. You can kick, throw or shove the ball. And, if you drag kids from the other team over the center line, they have to help you capture the gigantic sphere from your opponents.

Marie asks me to go riding with her at Candage Stables. I’m excited! I’ve never been on a real horse before. I don’t know about Marie. She grew up in Japan because her dad was in the Air Force. The invitation is for this Sunday, so I can’t go until after church, and after Grandmother comes over for Sunday dinner.

Then, of all days, my dad makes me rake leaves before I’m free. I hate raking leaves because we have so many. At least it’s just the front yard. I take the bamboo rake and the old pink blanket out of the shed. I scratch a pile of leaves into the woolly rag, sling it over my shoulder like Santa’s sack, and dump it in the ditch at the edge of the road. That’s where the town truck sucks them up like a leaf elephant. My favorite navy gingham blouse is smeared with damp earth, but I don’t bother to change when my dad finally lets me walk to Marie’s.

It’s already three o’clock when Mrs. Gardener drops us off in the farm’s parking lot by the dusty pony ring. Marie and I race to the barn sweet with hay. I pay with my saved allowance, and a teenage girl in cowboy boots boosts me into the stirrups of a tall Palomino named Silver. It doesn’t seem fair when Marie pays the same price, and the teenager leads her to the kiddie ring, unhooks a Shetland, and says, “There are no more horses for hire. Your pony’s name is Candy.”

Marie mounts her short steed, and the minute the teenager clomps out of sight, Silver gallops down the hill and through the gate into open pasture. I lurch backwards and grab the saddle horn to keep from falling. I think you pull the reins back to stop, but Silver won’t stop. I pull right. I pull left. He prances round and round and rears in a way that makes me yell, “Marie, you want to trade?”

By the time, Candy ambles down the hill, Marie kicking her chubby sides, I have somehow dismounted, and Silver is calm without a stranger on his back. I lead him back to the gate, and we switch reins.

Marie swings herself up onto the high horse, and Silver tears across the clumpy grass towards the trees-lined trails by the Mohawk River. No matter which way I turn Candy’s bit, I can’t get her to budge. She won’t go through the gate into the meadow even when I get off and pull. Once I let her have her way, she trots up the hill and circles the outside of the pony ring. It’s a dazzling Indian summer afternoon, and I’m sunburned, bored, and sweaty by the time Marie careens back to the barn on Heigh Ho Silver.

Monday, we have a social studies quiz on the Age of Exploration. Marie sits next to me in the front row. I’m crouched over my purple ditto when she covers her mouth and whispers, “What kind of climate does Bolivia have?”

I whisper back, “Hot and sticky.”

Marie stifles a giggle. “I said people, not climate.”

I grin. “Hot and sticky people!”

Mrs. Barrington rises from her desk, her heavy brows, an angry V. I fill in the real answer, mestizos, but Marie’s eyes bug out, and we both burst out laughing when we come to the blank for the birthplace of the Incas, Lake Titicaca.

I know the teacher has us in the front row, so we’ll behave, also because we both wear glasses. But Marie forgets hers all the time, or they’re lost, or broken, so she’s always asking to borrow mine since we share a similar prescription. For film strips, in the dark, sometimes we fold up the ear pieces and each look through one lens. It’s kind of a pain in the neck, but she’s my new friend.

I invite Marie to join our girl scout troop which meets in the school cafetorium. My mom is one of the leaders. Linda, my best friend from third grade is in our troop too. But this year she has Mrs. Melenkamp. Scouts is about the only place I can hang out with Linda without her older sister, Laura, bossing us around. Not exactly bossing. I’m just glad she’s not in our troop.

For our world culture badge we’ve already baked Mexican wedding cakes, yummy almond-flavored cookies sprinkled with powdered sugar. This week we’re building a papier mâché donkey pulling a cardboard flower cart. Marie is good at art like Linda. Together they wrap the gloopy newspaper around the chicken wire Donkey while I twist colored Kleenex into carnations and secure them with a wire stem.

As we’re cleaning up. Laura races into the room. “Mom’s waiting in the car.”

Laura pilfers one of Elaine Van Vorst’s Kleenex carnations. “Nice too! But what’s it for?” She pretend wipes her bottom and drops the flower on the floor before dashing back to the parking lot with Linda.

Marie laughs. I laugh, not because it’s really funny, but because I don’t want to be made fun of like dorky Elaine. I just need to keep Laura off my back. And I don’t want her snatching Marie!

The next day, in social studies, Mrs. Barrington introduces the term colonialism which gave the Explorers permission to conquer the Amerindians not decimated by European diseases and seize their natural resources. We map the triangular trade of slaves, sugar, and rum. For my independent project, I craft a shoebox diorama of El Dorado, the legendary City of Gold.

Around Halloween we climax our unit with a play about key explorers for the rest of the elementary school. I’m cast as Queen Elizabeth, probably because of my red hair, and Peter, the boy I think is so cute, as Sir Walter Raleigh.

For my bit, I scream, “Oh, a mud puddle!”

Peter flings his cape across brown construction paper taped to the stage and bows. “My lady.” If only his gallantry came from the heart, not the script. If only I could reign over Laura’s tyranny.

The grand finale is Donny Batchelder, in a tin foil helmet, as Hernan Cortez introducing horses to the New World (a stampede of kids leftover because we ran out of explorers).​On the few weekends before snow flies, Marie and I ride at Candage’s on Saturdays, early, and I always ask for Smokey, a medium-sized appaloosa, who kindly does whatever I ask. Marie asks for Silver who is much more obedient now that they trust each other. Cantering the trails by the river, the sun low, the air chill, mist hovering over the surface of the water—just Marie and I—is like discovering a new continent, a place where I can begin again without guise or defense. How can I keep this golden friendship untainted by the old-world order?

I join a bicycle club. Before my first ride, we gather at the home of a guy named Chris, on High Street. A string of skinny riders in tight black shorts leads me down Route 2A and over the bridge to Turners Falls. We stop on Avenue A for soft ice cream, peddle through town, over the other bridge then climb Mountain Road. Coasting down Maple Street, Chris comes alongside, “I was worried you wouldn’t be able to keep up on that heavy Schwinn no speed.”

I smile. “It’s the only bike I’ve ever had. I guess I’m used to it.”

Ernestine, Chris’s wife, becomes my friend and recommends I apply for her position as proofreader at a local publishing firm while she’s on maternity leave. After months of struggling through Warriner’s English Grammar and Composition with my students as a permanent sub, I am more than prepared to be a proofreader and thrilled to graduate from junior high into publishing.

From the first, I am trained to stay on after Ernestine returns. Besides proofreading, I gather research, and write storyboards for future booklets. That’s what they publish, booklets on: Everything You Wanted to Know About—fill in the blank. There’s always cool stuff to learn. My favorite topics are medical: asthma, diabetes, sleep disorders, psoriasis, etc. My least favorites are industrial safety which usually boil down to wear your hard hat and stay out of the way.

I like the people I work with too. Joe is my boss. He assigns me storyboards. Then there’s Aaron who is a middle manager for the art department. His wife is also pregnant—with twins. At editorial meetings, we all sit around the conference table with Leah. She’s from the promotion department instead of creative services. I never dreamed a job could be so much fun. Maybe this is how John feels at his job where his mechanical design gifts are useful in a like-minded community. Is this what it feels like when you find where you fit? And the company is so close to home, I can ride my bike.

I do a lot of riding by myself. When I want to cool off on a hot summer evening, I peddle through shady neighborhoods at the end of Main Street to make my own breeze. Then coast down to Highland Pond, through the woods to Highland Ave. and back to home sweet apartment on Congress Street. I love to go out Saturday mornings when everything is quiet, and the dew is still glistening on the grass. I like the speed of a bicycle, slow enough to carefully observe, but faster than walking, so you’re not part of the picture you’re looking at.

John likes to canoe. It’s kind of like biking on water. The same speed. Floating by a peaceful, green world, off the beaten path, sequestered by woods, even in the city, a secret world of bird song and burbling brook. When we lived in West Springfield, John and I tubed down a local portion of the Westfield River. Lovely, even when we drifted by a steep bank where people had shoved broken stoves and washing machines into the stream. The rusted carcasses, filled with muck and fallen branches, created a quiet eddy for a growing family of ducks.

Now that we both have good jobs, John takes me to buy a real canoe big enough for two. Our maiden voyage, we strap the green fiberglass hull to the roof of our Vega and put into the Deerfield by Stillwater Bridge. I paddle and John steers past the Williams Farm, past Deerfield Academy’s playing fields, and into the forest. Sometimes the water is narrow and deep. Sometimes we have to step out of the wooden ribs and wade a wide, pebbly shoal until there’s enough flow to float again.

One Sunday afternoon, I ride down High Street towards the hospital and see a For Sale sign in front of a big brown shingled house on the corner of Madison Circle. There’s a magnetic strip over the main sign that reads: Open house today. On a whim, I park my bike on the long walkway and ring the doorbell.

A stout old man in a brown suit answers the door. “Hello, I’m Mr. Tubb. Have you come to see the house?”

“I guess.” I look through the large foyer to the empty living room with original Craftsman trim and a corner fireplace. “I thought there would be other people here.”

“No problem.” Mr. Tubb leads the way up a gorgeous switchback stairway with a large window on the landing. “Let’s start with the master. Notice the bay of windows facing south.”

He leads me down the hall towards another spacious bedroom. “There are two more rooms the previous owners redecorated for their kids.”

One is wallpapered in sky blue with yellow flowers and a sky-blue carpet. Another is painted adobe with a geometric wall to wall. Not my taste, nor the style of this vintage home.

Mr. Tubb points towards the bathroom. “There’s nothing like these ball and claw tubs for a comfy soak.”

“Let me show you the walk-up attic. Plenty of room for a growing family. Are you married?”

“Yes,” I mumble, still marveling at my newlywed status.

“It has three dormers, so it could be a legal bedroom, a study, or perhaps a playroom. Do you have children?”

“No.” Children are nowhere on my radar. Then why can I see a toy box and a cozy rug where there are only cobwebs and dust?

I follow Mr. Tubb to the dining room with a built-in china cupboard painted pumpkin. “They’ve redecorated in here too. You like it?”

I bite my lip, mentally stripping both the cupboard and the wallpaper which is orange and chartreuse stripes flocked with intermittent brown velvet that reminds me of wooly bear caterpillars.

Mr. Tubb saves the kitchen for last. “The previous owners were called to Texas for a new job before they were able to finish the remodel, but I’m sure you can see the potential.”

There’s nothing but a scratched porcelain sink on one wall. No cabinets. Window and door trim are newly painted a yellow somewhere between canary and urine.

“I think they tore out the wall behind the chimney to install a wood stove.” He lifts his hand towards a gaping hole in the brick. “Looks ready to go.”

In my mind’s eye, I find myself sitting in a rocker enjoying its warmth. The hideous paint has been replaced with a soothing blue. The empty walls are filled with cabinets.

Mr. Tubb leads me through an adjacent doorway to a pantry with original beadboard cupboards. Through another is a mudroom I can already see lined with little red boots and parkas.

When Mr. Tubb opens the back door, I step onto a porch, its middle post entwined by a flowering vine. In the center of the yard is a giant oak hung with a wooden swing.

I turn to Mr. Tubb. “How long will you be here? I’d like to bring my husband to see the house.”

He smiles. “I can wait until you get back.”

“Okay.” Mr. Tubb escorts me to the front door. It’s a five-minute spin to the apartment where I gather my husband, and we return in the Vega.

Neither of us had been searching for a house, yet we make an offer that’s accepted that day.

Looking back, it was the swing that made the sale. I could see myself suspended above the earth, pumping higher and higher, floating skyward. Like biking on air. Making my own breeze. The home of my dreams ever before me. In the shade of the great oak, I saw none of its fixer-upper flaws: the ruinous renovations, the leaky roof, the ancient furnace, the cracks in the ceilings and walls, only the concept of home, a place where I could be part of the picture I was looking at.

John graduates in May with a degree in machine and tool design. The placement office finds him a job at Miller’s Falls Tool in Greenfield, so we rent an adorable upstairs apartment on quiet Congress Street. The bedroom has green wallpaper adorned with pink nosegays. There’s an upstairs porch, a built-in china cupboard, I use for books, and a tiny kitchen with original beadboard cabinetry. The bathroom has a tub with a shower. I couldn’t ask for more. It’s just adorable. I keep saying adorable because it’s like a perfect doll house, in a perfect, little town.

The only problem is a job for me. In sleepy Greenfield, I can’t further my fledgling advertising career, so I apply for the summer teaching certificate program at Smith College. If I get in, I’ll be prepared for a position by September.

I close my eyes our first night in our new space. We’re all unpacked. Our brass bed is set up. Charlotte, our marmalade kitten, is already asleep at my feet. I curl up careful not to bump her hind leg, still in a cast from an unknown mishap in our old neighborhood.

I awake to a yowl coming from under the bed. I leap off the mattress, and, in the dark, instinctively reach my hand underneath. I howl. John turns on the light, and there is Charlotte, her cast caught in the exposed coils of the box spring, twisting her leg in agony to escape. By dawn of our second day in paradise, our kitten has been euthanized, and I’m in the emergency room, my ring finger, horribly bitten, soaking in Betadine to avoid infection.

When I start the program at Smith, the finger is in a splint, resting the inflamed tendon. Thank goodness, it’s my left hand, so I can take notes.

I’m assigned two classes as a student teacher at Northampton’s secondary summer school which meets in the morning at the high school: a high school enrichment course in basic acting and an eighth-grade remedial class focused on grammar.

The acting instructor is a young woman with curly brown hair wearing an Indian print blouse you can sort of see through which succeeds in gaining everyone’s attention.

She weaves among the group and lowers her hands to indicate we must all lie down on the dusty stage. “We’ll begin with breathing and relaxation exercises.”

I’m surrounded by a horizontal herd of adolescents, inhaling their pungent blend of aftershave, perfume, and BO.

I must walk to the other end of the building to my remedial class, the long hallways stale with closed-up summer heat. By the time I get there, a middle-aged Miss So-and-So with short curly hair and dark glasses stands at the ready by her blackboard. All students are in straight rows facing front except two boys in matching jean jackets at a round table in the back.

She hands me three sets of dittos and points. “You’ll be helping Danny and Mike with parts of speech.”

I resist the urge to salute and report to my station. For an hour and a half Sergeant So-and-So drones on while I cajole the obvious bad boys with the joys of conjunctions and adverbs.

The seminar portion of my program meets in the afternoon on the Smith campus. We convene, ten of us, around a blonde oval table, in a modern building overlooking Paradise Pond. Our professor, a man with a gray comb over, presides with his back to the idyllic boathouse. For two hours, we discuss lofty principals of pedagogy from our reading while my sweaty legs stick to the curved birch seats.

The girl who sits opposite me invites me to go swimming after class. We park my unairconditioned Vega at a pond in Whately and lunge for the water still in our clothes. A few hours of splashing, lying in the sun, and laughing at her imitation of Professor Pompous, and I have a sunburn line at the edge of my cutoffs.

As the program progresses, Sergeant So-and-So relinquishes the front of the room, and takes my place at the bad boy table. It’s my turn to plan and execute a lesson. Personally, I can’t bear another second on parts of speech, and choose to read aloud from Cinderella, the original version, a selection from the German folk tales recorded by the Brothers Grimm. The tale, quite grisly, includes the step sisters chopping off their heels to fit into the slipper that guarantees a shot at The Prince. Looking up at my audience, even Danny and Mike are paying attention. Afterwards, there’s lively discussion, and begging for a gruesome encore. I wish I could say I included an intro to the basic elements of a story: character, setting, and a plot diagram of exposition, rising action, climax, and denouement. Or perhaps background info on the Brothers Grimm, but no. I’m motivated solely by enthusiasm for a book I recently bought for twenty-five cents as a library discard and the hunch that middle schoolers would love romance and gore.

In acting class, I don’t have to present a lesson. I’m more an assistant improv director, or the resident straight man who must stay in character, even after the most ridiculous line or action.

And so, without distinction, I complete my training and land a permanent sub position as an eighth-grade language arts teacher at a regional school north of Greenfield.

I always thought kids who lived in the country were better behaved than kids from the city, but apparently, there are bad boys even in the woods of Warwick. They sit together in the back row until I make a seating plan. Still they laugh, taunt other students, and fail to pay appropriate attention. Appropriate being the key word. I know my lesson plans are loosey-goosey, and the Department Chair’s office is inside my room behind a folding screen. I’m sure she hears all the nonsense I can’t control, including my own shouting. She is kind, however, and on my first observation form, notes that I am making mistakes common to a novice, and need to watch my tone.

While John is soaring in his chosen field, I’m seriously doubting my decision to be an educator. I’ve tried to reform my penmanship, so students can understand what I write on the board, but now l hardly recognize my own handwriting. I put on suits to appear more adult, but I feel like I’m playing dress-up. I’m at least ten years older than my students, but the Boys from Warwick are a head taller than I am.

It should be no big deal, but the thing that bugs me most, is the fact that as a teacher my name now begins with Miss. I hear it a thousand times a day, a constant reminder that John and I are still not married, even in our perfect nest. And, as a teacher, I’m kind of a public figure. I feel like everyone in town knows I’m just living with my boyfriend. Standing by the lobster tank at Foster’s Market, one of my pony-tailed students shouts, “Mom, there’s Miss So-and-So,” with the excitement of an Elvis sighting.

How can I be a real Miss So-and-So, when I feel like an unfinished child, still figuring things out, still emotionally needy, raw, incomplete, and searching for I don’t know what. I’m mystified – sounds like – Miss Defied. I know I want to marry John for all the right reasons and all the wrong reasons. Because I love him. Because I want him to make me someone else. As if being his wife can inoculate me from rejection, loneliness, and shame.

Towards the end of September, as leaves fall from the trees, John pops the question. It’s a short engagement.

My mom makes me a wedding dress, a white one I don’t think I deserve, with covered buttons all the way down the back. The English Department Chair organizes a small shower. I receive a handmade afghan, tiered cake plates, a candle snuffer, and so on. I stand in front of the fireplace in my childhood home, encircled by nuclear family and friends. I’m crowned with a ring of pink carnations and ivy. No veil. Gretchen, my college roommate, wears a gray pantsuit as my maid of honor. My brother stands up for John in burnt orange plaid pants that clash with John’s light blue seersucker suit and pink madras tie. With standard vows, John places a wedding band on my healed finger, and I’m no longer a Miss but a Mrs.

John won’t tell me where we’re going for our honeymoon when we wave good-bye from our Vega and head north.

It’s his secret until we park under the portico of The Hanover Inn and climb the stairs to the lobby.

A man in a navy-blue blazer and rep tie looks over the top of his glasses, “May I help you?

John places his hand on a tall antique desk. “We’d like a room for the long weekend.”

I’m as surprised as John, when the man leans forward and laughs, not exactly a laugh, rather a small huff. “I’m sorry. This is Columbus Day weekend. It’s been booked for six months. Leaf peepers, you know.”

But I didn’t know. Having cursed every leaf I had to rake as a child, I can’t believe anyone drives hundreds of miles to see fall foliage, or that John and I, unwittingly, have followed a mass pilgrimage towards the epicenter of New England tourism.

John glances towards me then back to the clerk. “It’s our honeymoon.”

“Sorry, Sir. I can give you reservations for the dining room this evening.”

John takes my hand. “Sure.”

“6:30?”

“Sure.”

“By the way, tie required.”

That leaves little time to find other lodging. We head south the way we came, and realize every motel we approach has a neon no vacancy sign glowing in the early dark. We travel as far as White River Junction before John turns around and heads back North on a less traveled route. At last, a drift wood sign for The Taft Motel without a pink no vacancy sign beneath.

We pull into the gravel drive and enter a small office with knotty pine paneling. A balding man in a wrinkled polo signs us in and gives us our keys.

While we’re inspecting the musty shower and saggy bed, there’ a knock at the door. John answers.

“You mentioned it’s your honeymoon.” Mr. Taft hands John a bottle of champagne and two ruby goblets with cut glass stems. “Brought these from the house.”

John smiles, “Thank you!” and sets the glasses on the dresser for later.

We hurry back to Hanover, and as the maître d’ leads us to our table, I notice my black tights and high heeled boots, a black leotard and a plaid mini kilt, are nothing like the formal attire of the women around me. But when I’m seated at a table set with multiple spoons and forks gleaming in the candlelight, I gaze at my freshly minted husband in his madras tie, and nothing else matters. I spread my linen napkin over my lap. The waiter fills my glass with Perrier, and, with silver tongs, drops a slice of lemon into the sparkling water. The fragrance of citrus rushes up my nostrils as John orders us prime rib and oven-roasted potatoes. Savoring each bite, I know I don’t deserve this delectable man, but he is mine and I am his.

We spend the rest of the weekend touring the Dartmouth Green, The Flume, The Polar Caves, and every other tourist trap between New Hampshire and the Mass line.

It’s dark when we clomp up the stairs to our apartment for the first time as man and wife. I wonder if anything will be different as John finds the light, and there in front of our door, wrapped in plain brown paper, is a package. No address to or from. I take it inside and sit on our rattan couch.John sets our suitcases down in the bedroom and hurries to join me.

I tear off the paper, revealing a colossal book with a white leather cover. I open the pages edged in gold. There are illustrations of scenes I haven’t seen since Sunday School: Daniel in the Lion’s Den. Moses parting the Red Sea. Jesus in a crowd of children, one child in particular on his lap.​To this day, I‘m not sure who gave us that Bible. At the time, it seemed an odd gift. Neither John nor I were attending church. I was interested in astrology. But something kept me from discarding it, and I have it still, a tangible breadcrumb from my path to Jesus. Evidence that He was watching over me, and my marriage, in ways I couldn’t imagine.

When I was a little girl, my grandmother gave me the whole Bobbsey Twins series, one book at a time, but I was a tomboy, riding my bike and collecting tadpoles. Who had time to sit and read a book?

In fact, I never opened a children’s novel until I read Little House in the Big Woods aloud to my oldest daughter. Together we pioneered the continent with Laura Ingles Wilder. At the end of Where the Red Fern Grows, I cried as hard as my little girl. I marveled at the insights of Tuck Everlasting. But it was The Wreck of the Zephyr by Chris Van Allsburg, a well told tale within a tale, that inspired me to write my own stories. How hard could it be to write a picture book?

A chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, led by the famous Jane Yolen, met in the Hatfield Public Library, not far from my home. Over several months, I stood by the wall in the packed room listening to critiques. When it was finally my turn to share, I learned there was already a bestseller on the same topic. I was informed my second attempt, was not unlike The Borrowers, a classic I was embarrassed I’d never heard of. And by the way, many of my sentences were run-ons infested by commas and strings of slothful adverbs and adjectives. Although I’m sure someone said something encouraging, all I absorbed was I am ignorant, and I have nothing original to say. After only two tries, my thin-skinned writing career went into long-term hibernation.

When my second baby was born in the depths of winter, he woke often, hungry and cold in our drafty fixer-upper. In the middle of the night, I nursed him back to sleep, and began reading adult novels for pleasure for the first time. I blew through a trilogy about King Arthur starting with The Crystal Cave along with thrillers of the early 80’s like Gorky Park.

It was during this time, that I also opened my life to Christ and discovered a whole new world of publishing. I consumed a novelization of the book of Esther, David Wilkerson’s, The Cross and the Switchblade and countless discipleship how-to and testimony books. I told my pastor I too wanted to write for the Lord, and he suggested I start with my testimony.

I wrote down the story of how I came to recognize Christ as my savior and sent it to a Christian Sunday School Paper, Power For Living. With a few suggested edits, it was accepted. Iris, a friend from church asked me to do the same for her. Her testimony was also quickly published. This was followed by a handful of other first person articles about my growing faith in Christ, published in Christian Women’s magazines.

My pastor gave me a flyer about a Christian Writer’s conference at Gordon College, and suggested I go. Part of the event was a panel of well- known writers, editors, and agents ready to answer any question about the industry. A newbie to the realm, I raised my hand and asked Phillip Yancey if there was a difference between a Christian novel and a novel written by a Christian. He said even if a book was not obviously evangelical, any author’s serious work is embedded in their belief system. He pointed me to Tolstoy as an example, and that summer, I tackled Anna Karenina. It was a marriage crisis that brought me to the Lord, and oh, how I identified with the process of sin and its devastating consequences.

I was still dabbling with children’s stories with no success, when we moved to Colorado because the company my husband worked for was sold to a parent company in Denver. At my desk composing thank you letters to those who had helped us pack, I came across the address of my old friend, Iris, who’d moved to Littleton, Colorado a few years prior. Only then did I realized that Littleton was a suburb of Denver.

I picked up the phone, “Hi, Iris?”

“Ann? Ann Averill?” She drew a breath. “This is so weird. I was just praying about you.”

“Really?

“I’m trying to write a book-length version of my conversion from Judaism to Christianity, and I was saying, ‘God, I wish Ann was here to help me.’”

I set down my pen. “I am here Iris. I’m in Arvada.”

She gasped, “That’s twenty minutes from my house.”

That launched a year-long project ghostwriting the story of her Bubbi’s escape from pogroms in Belarus to Iris’s discovering Jesus as her Messiah in Brookline, Massachusetts. It was my first memoir, albeit on behalf of someone else, but I was enthralled with trying to capture a time, a place, and the main character’s spiritual journey.

I went to my second Christian Writer’s conference in the Rockies and signed up for a critique of Iris’s manuscript. I entered a small room where a young man with a dark beard and glasses leaned in to ask, “Why did you write this?”

“Because I think God wanted me to.”

He grinned. “I hear that a lot.

My words sounded suddenly trite and presumptuous.

He continued to lean in. “So who is your audience, what’s your angle, do you have comp titles?”Apparently, these were standard considerations, but I was so green, I had no answers, so needy, my eyes welled. My allotted fifteen-minute literary consult turned into a half hour counseling session where the young man listened as I poured out all my insecurities as a writer and human being. Except for his kindness, I would have been too humiliated to ever attend another conference.

When I came out into the larger foyer, a woman saw Arvada on my name tag, and asked if she could have a ride home. She had unexpected transportation issues, and it turned out she lived only two blocks from my house and wanted to start a Christian writers group. Others from the conference joined us, and we helped each other develop our craft. By the next Christian writers conference, I had a few chapters of an unfinished novel for critique.

This time I was paired with a young editor from a romance publisher. She looked up from my first page. “You can write! Tell me about your novel.”

I blathered the thinly veiled plot of the near collapse of my own marriage.

She handed me her card. “Great, a Christian version of The Bridges of Madison County. Send me the full manuscript ASAP.”

I left the room and wandered in circles under the hotel atrium until I bumped into a friend from my writers group.

“What happened?”

“She wants the full manuscript.”

The editor’s encouragement was rocket fuel. My writing friends helped me craft the best edition I could, and in under a year I sent off a completed novel. Then waited. And waited.

Finally, a letter with the return address of the Christian Romance house. I tore it open. “We regret to inform you that Miss so-and-so no longer works here…”

I could have googled Miss So-and So and found the publisher she’d moved to, but it was only the 1990’s. I didn’t understand this submission was a near miss, not a rejection. I couldn’t see I was getting closer and closer to my goal, so instead, of sending it elsewhere, I buried it in a drawer, and began reading Ann Tyler and Flannery O’Connor.

No surprise, my next genre was short stories. I scoured TheWriter’s Market for literary magazines and received several standard rejections and a few, “Not this one, but what else do you have.” I subscribed to Writer’s Digest, a professional writers’ magazine, and learned more about the nitty gritty of writing than I did in college.

One day on a grocery run to King Soopers, I stumbled upon Mary Karr’s TheLiars’ Club at the end cap of the Hallmark section. Standing in the middle of the aisle, ice cream melting in my cart, I was riveted by what I’d learned to call voice.

Angela’s Ashes ambushed me in the same grocery store. Reading Frank McCourt was like listening to him tell his story. The way his dialogue ran in and out of exposition without quotation marks, I saw immediately why he won the Pulitzer. He broke the rules with a unique style both ancient and groundbreaking and entirely unputdownable.

During this golden age of memoir, I was working full-time as a remedial reading teacher, and studying for my masters at University of Colorado at Denver in Language, Literacy and Culture. While all my pleasure reading became memoir, all my writing was academic.

Once I graduated, I took a new job as a teacher of English language learners. Many of my immigrant students were fresh from Mexico, and I fell in love with their culture. Teaching House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros’ spare, evocative language seemed the apex of show don’t tell, and became the new exemplar for my own work as a member of the National Writing Project at the high school where I worked. A piece about one of my first trips to Mexico, Zumbales, and The Daily Miracle, about my beloved students, were written during that era.

Because of elderly parents, my time in Colorado came to an end, and my husband and I moved back to Massachusetts. My children had flown the nest, and I started writing creatively again. In my newest genre, fairy tales, I wrote about a childless old couple who gained a coveted infant through magic, only to lose her through magic as she became a young adult. Back to my original dream of writing a picture book, I returned to SCBWI under new leadership at a new location, The Eric Carle Museum of Children’s Literature.

Through friends in the larger group, I was invited into a smaller group containing the first published writers and illustrators I’d ever worked with. Through one of these friends, Yulia’s Fawn, was shared with Ruth Sanderson, famous for her luminous fairy tale illustrations. Her response to my work was, “This is good! Too bad there’s no current market for this genre.” She also asked if she could use my story with her illustration students, but I was too shy to take her up on that. I wrote another fairy tale, Bleeding Heart, however, on the power of her praise, and never completed another before I was totally distracted by my new job at an inner city middle school.

I was struggling for my life as a teacher with primarily Puerto Rican students from generational poverty, so unlike first generation immigrants. Although the picture books I brought to writing group were about patient, loving grandmothers, my journal was filled with the heartache and horror of my inability to manage the chaos within my classroom.

The summer after my first year at the inner-city school, I reconnected with The National Writing Project and spent two weeks in the Teachers as Writers program at U. Mass. One of our first exercises was to write from an unusual perspective. I chose to narrate as one of my female students. Her voice burst from my pen in a torrent. Her raw emotion, romantic distractions, and home-life trauma flooded the page. When it was my turn to share the piece, the professor used the word brilliant. Her encouragement led me to share the first in a growing portfolio of such stories with my writing group. Their unanimous response, “This is what you should be writing!”

But what was it? A young adult novel? A memoir? An autobiographical novel? With multiple narrators made up of composite student voices as well as my own, who was my audience, my readers? I went to my first Write Angles Conference, in S. Hadley, and asked these questions to a panel of experts. Mira Bartok, author of The Memory Palace, another memoir I’d just devoured, was the one to take my question, and afterwards, invited me to eat dessert with her after lunch. She asked why I called my project a novel if it was my real-life experience? Why not say it’s true?My answer, “Because it’s a story about my failure and what it was like to live with that.

Her response, “Do you know how many people need to hear that?”

And so, with new fervor, I worked on Broken, 180 Days in the Wilderness of an Urban Middle School, with my writing group. Before it was finished, I submitted three separate chapters, to Writer’s Digest short story contests, and to my amazement, the first two placed twenty-fourth and eighteenth out of thousands. The third placed high enough to be published in their short-short collection of winners for that year. Wow!

I now had the confidence to submit queries for what I called a novel based on a true story to agents and editors. I received several personal rejections praising the caliber of the writing, but adding they weren’t interested in the content. I was encouraged and discouraged at the same time. How to find my niche in a haystack?

This was the beginning of indie publishing, and finally my husband said he’d help me publish it as a Kindle on Amazon. And so it remains. But I didn’t know how to promote it. Every conference emphasized the need for an author’s platform which I had no clue how to construct.

Enter Andy Christian, the multi-talented son of a close friend. He asked if he could use one of my fairy tales to try his hand at illustration. I was delighted to share my work, and he offered to create a blog for me saying, “You need to offer people a sample of your work for free, so they’ll buy your book. Like they offer snacks at the grocery store. Once they taste your work, they’ll buy your other products.” I agreed, and in an afternoon, I had a blog.

I invited another young friend to my writing group who’s also a conceptual photographer and graphic designer. She offered to help me update my blog with a new look that represents a consistent tone and theme. Perhaps this essay has helped me find that. Reviewing my writing career, I’ve come to realize how much I wanted the praise of men. And yet when I came to faith, my heart’s desire was to proclaim God’s glory through my life.

My latest project, Breadcrumbs, A Baby Boomer’s Path to Jesus, has brought me full circle, illustrating how God was always at work leading, protecting, using, even my fears, especially my fears, to help me trust him more and more.

As a writer recounting all these near misses, I could be frustrated, disheartened, and give up, but trusting God’s goodness and purpose for my life, I know that in His economy nothing is wasted—especially failures in my own strength. Perhaps failure is the rudder that’s steered me away from rocks beneath the waves.​Rather I re-count my ordinary life, trusting the miraculous arithmetic of the cross. Zero plus infinity equals infinity. Even negative numbers when added to the infinite equals more than we can imagine.

I’m Ann Averill. I was asked to give my testimony. Pastor Steve has been preaching about healing, and it’s the 4th anniversary of Grace United, so I’m gonna talk about my healing and how Grace United has been a part of that.

I’m an incurable writer, so for the past two years, I’ve been working on a memoir titled Breadcrumbs, a Baby Boomer’s Path to Jesus because in revisiting my past, I’ve found evidence that God was at work in me even before I was conscious of it.

Some facts:

I was born illegitimately in the 1950’s, at the time, the epitome of shame. I was given up at birth and lived in a foster home for nine months until I was adopted by parents who went to church every Sunday. It was an ordinary church that sang old hymns, like: What a Friend We Have in Jesus, Be Thou My Vision, and Jesus Loves Me. I never understood the cross, but worship team, I remember those songs.

The summer I was sixteen, Woodstock happened, the legendary rock and roll concert that ushered in the hippie generation. I believed their mantra Do your own thing, and racked up more shame.

Flash forward to 1982 to an incident where God revealed himself. Looking back, I was on Pastor Steve’s sin cycle. With low-self-esteem I painted myself as victim, so I could give myself permission to do what I knew was wrong. I almost destroyed my most important relationships and was terrified by my capacity for harm, so when a Christian neighbor told me, “The wages of sin is death,” I knew she was correct. When she said, “but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord,” was all in.

Finally, I thought, I get the cross. It’s like a math problem. My sin plus Jesus equals zero. My past sins are forgiven, and henceforth I’m on my own to keep my slate clean.

While writing, I was involved with Fit classes at GU.

In The Cure I learned that I really didn’t understand the cross at all. My sins, past, present, and future plus Jesus does not equal zero. It equals a brand new identity. The apostle Paul calls believers saints not sinners because when God sees us through the lens of the cross, we are already our sanctified selves. Colossians calls us holy, chosen, beloved. What freedom not to be the fatherless babe who personified shame or the do-your-own- thing hippie who was looking for significance, and self-worth in all the wrong places. I am the pure Bride of Christ.

In Who Gives a Rip about Sin, I learned it’s healthy to need a sense of significance, self-worth and purpose, but these needs are only satisfied completely in a relationship with our heavenly father. Adam and Eve were created for paradise, totally dependent on God. They had no ability, on their own, to absorb or deflect sin. The same is true for us. But because they succumbed to Satan’s lies, they were forever separated from a holy god and so are we. Therefore, the only remedy for temptation is not trying harder not to sin, which focuses on sin, but trusting in the love of God which already provides what we’re tempted to seek in destructive ways.

While studying Living in the Presence of God, I became a first-time grandmother. God used my love for dear Jack to mirror His unconditional love for me. No amount of bad behavior could ever make me leave Jack. As his grandmother, he is mine by blood. Romans says nothing can separate us from the love that’s in Christ Jesus. What joy to finally feel lovable. To feel the tremendous commitment of a doting God who wants to care for us, provide for us, enjoy us. He’s like a ferocious grandfather on steroids. This is who adopted me! The living God! And he alone can protect us from sin.

While preparing this, the words to one of my childhood hymns kept playing in my head. When I checked to see if I remembered it correctly, I was amazed that it summed up what I’m trying to say: That Truth Trusted Transforms.

So I think God wants me to share these lyrics:

1. A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing; our helper he amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing. For still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe; his craft and power are great, and armed with cruel hate, on earth is not his equal.

2. Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing, were not the right man on our side, the man of God's own choosing. Dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is he; Lord Sabaoth, his name, from age to age the same, and he must win the battle.

3. And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us, we will not fear, for God hath willed his truth to triumph through us. The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him; his rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure; one little word shall fell him.

4. That word above all earthly powers, no thanks to them, abideth; the Spirit and the gifts are ours, thru him who with us sideth. Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also; the body they may kill; God's truth abideth still; his kingdom is forever.

When I was writing my first book, Broken, 180 Days in the Wilderness of an Urban Middle School, a reader of any early draft asked, “Do you intend to publish this or is it therapy writing?”

I don’t remember my answer, but I interpreted her question more as a statement: my content was not worth publishing, and the caliber of my writing wasn’t good enough to be accepted by an agent or editor. Ugh. Stab to the heart. I wanted to give up the project—but I couldn’t.

What started as rough, raw blurts in my journal grew and grew, evolving into a novel based on my true story. I wrote and wrote until the compulsion to express and understand a very painful episode in my life was exposed and explained on the page.

At the Golden Globes, Meryl Streep quoted her friend, Carrie Fisher. “Take your broken heart and make it into art.” Unconsciously, that’s exactly what I was doing. In a desperate effort to grapple with what broke me, I put together something for others.

After completing that process, I can say that therapy writing is not necessarily poor quality. Deep wounds create powerful prose. It’s simply intimate writing meant for no one’s eyes but my own. It’s what I can’t say out loud even to myself. It’s where I confess and admit things I’m not ready for anyone else to know. I exhume every emotion, consequence, and ramification associated with my trauma. I write and write without self-editing or exclusion. I don’t worry about making myself or others the hero, villain or fool. I allow seemingly unrelated strands to weave themselves into my story without thought to overall design. I scribble and scribble until my drive to comprehend is satisfied, until what’s eating me is captured in words because definition is the first step in healing. Therapy writing is getting my broken heart, and its cure onto the page.

Where therapy writing ends, publishable writing begins or not. To publish means to make public, so I asked myself if my story could benefit others. It’s a hard decision to share your moment of failure with strangers, but often the more vulnerable a story, the more universal.

Turning therapy writing into art requires craft, and perseverance. Craft means allowing skilled others, a writing group, an editor, or agent, to help you work your words until they are as accessible and potent as possible. Perseverance means mining the truth, the whole truth, so dig deep and don’t give up until you reach the diamonds.

Towards the end of Streep’s speech she mentioned Tommy Lee Jones who reminded her of an actor’s privilege to display empathy. A talented performance fleshes out a character’s complexity so that viewers can relate to individuals they may not otherwise care about.

As a memoir writer, I have the privilege of portraying myself, my place, my struggles, not on the stage, but on the page. I orchestrate my words to transport my audience. Can you see me, dear reader? Can you hear my voice? Can you feel what I feel? Can you fathom what’s at stake? Am I in any way like you?

When a reader, in the privacy of thought, answers, yes, I get you, my work has bridged the gap between two souls, and bridged the gap between therapy writing and art.

Thank you Carrie Fisher, Princess Leah, and Meryl Streep, queen of the silver screen, for reminding me that a broken heart isn’t the end of the world. It’s part of the human condition. And those who’ve suffered, can best comfort others.

So where are you, dear writers, in your struggles, your process? Deep in therapy writing, or rounding the bend towards art? Love to hear your answers.